Pocket Change: The infrastructure problem

Pocket Change is a monthly series of notes on disruption, authored by 18 Coffees co-founder Caleb Gardner. Be the first to read Pocket Change — subscribe to the email newsletter here.

Ahead of the midterm elections here in the United States, no one was sure how motivating “save democracy” was going to be as a rallying cry. Despite a handful of 2020 election deniers – those who question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election – running for key offices, some key polls showed that voters took the threat to democracy seriously, but were more concerned with other economic issues like inflation that directly affected their lives.

On Election Day last week, voters made it clear that they can walk and chew gum at the same time. Abortion rights, inflation, and other issues were top of mind, but so was protecting democratic norms. Election deniers lost big across the board.

In my experience, it’s hard to get people to care about infrastructure – the institutions, policies, and workflows we put in place that govern our lives – because we are always more concerned with something immediate. Infrastructure building has an opportunity cost: the time we spend building (metaphorical) roads and bridges is time we could have spent on direct action. Infrastructure is often tomorrow’s problem.

But as this election shows, infrastructure can be urgent too – when it’s seen as under threat. The truth is that American democracy has always been more fragile than we’ve realized, held together by outdated documents and a whole lot of norms that have been pressure-tested over the past few years. Protecting it has a new potency.

Whether we realize it on any given day, the same fragility exists in a lot of our infrastructure, including the social contracts that govern our work lives and our personal lives. How can we consistently re-evaluate and strengthen them when other problems feel more urgent?

Unlike voting in a two-party system, our prioritization decisions don’t have to be binary. We can also walk and chew gum, caring about issues across multiple horizons. We just need to treat long-term infrastructure building as something that needs our attention in the portfolio of things we care about today.

Keeping an eye on:

• AI OPT-OUTS – Generative AI is having a moment, and now anyone can use OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 to build apps that generate images – but some artists want to opt out.
• ESG NITWITS – Republican Senators, who are increasingly targeting “woke capitalism” as a new culture war front, have sent letters to 50 of the largest firms in the U.S. warning them about giving advice about ESG.
• POST APOCALYPSES – This excellent visualization by the New York Times shows what life is likely to be like after climate change – something that increasingly looks like our future.
• NEWS BYTES – TikTok calls itself an entertainment app, but it’s increasingly where people get their news. Will it show the kind of editorial responsibility other social media sites have long resisted?
• PHONE REPAIRS – Replacing our smartphones every few years is costly for our wallets – and for the environment. Why can’t we repair them like we repair our cars?
• BODY INTERFACES – Ready for a world where you can text with your brain or shop Amazon via your eyeballs? It might not be that far off.

Managing Partner at 18 Coffees