Americans are from Musk, Europeans are from Greta

Reflections on the First Progress Conference

Europeans care a lot about recycling. The European Union has banned regular single-use plastics in straws and mandated that lids of plastic bottles remain attached to marginally decrease the already low likelihood of plastic bottle lids in Europe ending up in the ocean. Surely then, recycling 200-ton rockets rather than letting them fall into the ocean is a no brainer. Not just due to an ideological commitment to recycling but because it makes economic sense, allowing for significant cost savings. Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent the first recycled rocket into space in 2017. Yet, surprisingly, the CEO of ArianeGroup the leading European space launch provider, has remained dismissive of the potential of re-usable rockets for Europe as recent as July 2024. In contrast, SpaceX has just successfully landed and recaptured a rocket the size of a skyscraper.

Left: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr, Right: Picture by the author.

The juxtaposition of the plastic bottle lid attachment and the Starship recycling is one mental picture that I take away from the first annual progress conference in Berkeley, which I have attended as a Roots of Progress blog-building fellow. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but there is a kernel of truth to it and that should give us Europeans sufficient reason to reflect. The need for European progress is one of four brief notes that I have jotted down as a post-digest to the conference.

1. A shared belief in progress

The progress movement has a broad tent. There is no party line and there is significant intellectual diversity. Some would describe themselves as supply-side progressives, others as state-capacity libertarians. Some are hard tech founders, some work in media, some work in policy. Some are deeply concerned about AI risk; others think its overblown. Still, the following is what I have perceived as common beliefs across most participants:

technological progress

• has been a tremendous force for good, especially in the last 200 years

• can be an even bigger force for good in the next 200 years, however, this is not an automatism

dynamism over stasis

• economic growth vs. degrowth

• energy abundance vs. 2000-watt society

• YIMBY vs. NIMBY

• pro-natalism vs. overpopulation

pro-humanity

• humans should have agency

• individual freedom

• longevity

solution-orientation

• don’t just describe problems, contribute to solutions

• negative trends and risks should not be denied but tackled

• specificity is valuable

2. From progress studies to progress movement

The term “progress studies” was coined by Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison in their 2019 Atlantic op-ed. However, I am not sure that this is the best term anymore.

First, there is a lot of value in analyzing historical patterns of progress and in bringing industrial literacy to education. However, if I think of the progress conference it was not an academic debate amongst economic historians. It was in large parts a forward-looking debate between multiple stakeholder groups about the present and the future. The original op-ed did explicitly say “The goal is to treat, not merely to understand” but the emphasis of the term progress studies is nevertheless inherently tied to the latter.

Second, Tyler Cowen has been one of the prominent proponents of the great stagnation hypothesis. As such, some understood progress studies as an attempt to break free from stagnation. However, as Tyler himself has declared the great stagnation is over. Largely based on the prospect of AI, the debate at the conference was not so much between 0% and 2% future growth but more between 2% and 20%.

Does this mean the progress movement is not needed anymore? Absolutely not. Arguably, the progress movement is more relevant than ever:

• An understanding of the roots of progress in the Industrial Revolution is more relevant for today, if we are facing an AI revolution.

• Identifying key bottlenecks and risks to human progress and tackling them can be even more valuable in a scenario with high latent growth potential.

• We might assume that there is a two-way relationship between (expected) economic growth and a culture of progress. In that case, if we reach higher economic growth rates, it will be easier for progress-related ideas and ideologies to become mainstream again.

3. We need an intellectually serious progress movement

Personally, I hope that

Jason Crawford

’s book on techno-humanism will provide an impetus for the progress movement to further crystallize its core beliefs into a coherent philosophy of progress. Looking at the experience of the Industrial Revolution and the potential of AI to raise economic growth rates, I expect that there will be an intellectual and political demand for some progress-related movement and ideology. It is crucial that this niche will be filled with a sensible and intellectually serious movement.

• A progress aesthetic can and should be part of progress, but vibes alone are not sufficient. To make progress there is also a need to understand complex challenges and research specific trade-offs and solutions.

• If we care about progress, we should want that society at large becomes more progress-friendly. However, toxic public advocacy of an issue is net harmful to that issue. For example, Raëlian advocacy for human cloning has created a lot of publicity for the Raëlians. However, Raël has probably done more than the pope to ensure that human cloning has been banned.

To be more explicit:

• “E/acc” as defined by its manifesto denies human agency and denies any intrinsic value of sentient beings. I consider both beliefs dangerous and misguided.

• Most experts believe that complexity first increases and then decreases with increasing entropy.

• The fastest theoretically possible way to increase entropy in the Universe is called “false vacuum decay” and it kills everything at light speed.

• Progress should not be tied to indifference to human extinction and to the idolization of an anti-human philosopher, who has inspired terror attacks and writes soft-pieces about Xinjiang from his communist exile.

4. Europe needs a progress movement

In 1967 Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber published the book “The American Challenge”.¹ His core thesis was that America is accelerating and that the US will establish a commanding position of economic and technological superiority over Europe, unless the old continent makes a determined, joint effort to embrace advanced technologies at European scale and to build a culture of dynamism and individual empowerment.²

Schreiber’s most dire predictions of American businesses taking over Europe have not fulfilled. However, it certainly feels like the American Challenge is real this time. On the eve of transformative AI, America dominates the digital economy, and Europe struggles to keep up. And it doesn’t seem that most Europeans are mentally and culturally ready for what’s ahead. If the European parliament wants to reconceptualize growth - fine. But if we don’t want to become an open-air museum for Americans we also have to rediscover and re-embrace growth. As the recent Draghi-Report highlights in some detail – Europe is at risk of falling behind.

Progress with European aesthetics

Europe needs a progress movement that pushes for things from simplifying requirements for start-ups through EU Inc. to unlocking more housing to ensuring that environmental impact assessments that take forever don’t keep slowing down the energy transition (counter-intuitively Texas of all places is the Western champion of building renewables…). European progress is not just a copy-paste of American progress. For example, I don’t think we should copy American car-centric cities with ridiculously broad roads & walkways but mediocre public transport. In terms of accessibility, density and transport a city like Barcelona is objectively superior to Los Angeles. The European progress aesthetic does not have to be “Metropolis” with skyscrapers, automated driving, and lots of concrete. It can be green, clean, safe, and walkable cities with skyscrapers, air conditioning as well as restaurants and trees on the streets. Europe can define its own way of doing things, however, for this to work, we also need to remain competitive.  

If you want to get involved here a few pointers:

• 🇩🇪 -

  Dominik Hermle
  &
  Jannik Reigl

• 🇮🇪 -

  Progress Ireland

• 🇳🇱 - Onno Eric Blom at Recoding Government NL

• 🇬🇧 -

  Sam Bowman
  ,
  Model Thinking
  ,
  Lauren Policy
  ,
  Jonah Messinger
  Ruxandra Teslo
  , Ben James

• 🇨🇭 - DM me here or at kevin@kevinkohler.ch

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1. Schreiber’s book served as a key inspiration for Klaus Schwab to start the European Management Forum in 1971, which later became the World Economic Forum. Schwab has achieved a lot since then, but he hasn’t managed to progress-pill Europe. Rather as early as 1973 the Club of Rome and its “Limits to Growth” thesis spread. Indeed, in some ways it almost feels like the hippies in Berkeley and the business elites in Davos have switched sides. To make the slightly exaggerated point: In Berkeley people in t-shirts discuss how to tackle the bottlenecks to more energy and more economic growth. In Davos people in suits discuss how to reconceptualize growth.

2. “The American challenge is not basically industrial or financial. It is, above all, a challenge to our intellectual creativity and our ability to turn ideas into practice. We should have the courage to recognize that our political and mental constructs — our very culture — is being pushed back by this irresistible force. (…) if we fail to catch up, the Americans will have a monopoly on know-how, science, and power.” - Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. (2014). The American Challenge. Versilio. p. 75