At the moment, a crop of ideas that have been lying around for some time are sprouting. Make no mistake, these ideas time has come and they will be used to shape the next generation of economic and social policy. They will affect every life and every nation.
Specifically, 2020 has seen the following ideas shift from fringe to centre stage, first slowly, then suddenly:
BTC
CBDS and the end of non-digital cash
MMT
UBI
Social credit scores with points tied to real world privileges (including “vaccine passports”)
Doughnut economics
None of these ideas are new ideas. Some have been lying around for centuries, others decades. But what they have in common, is that they are all having a moment. For better or for worse, crises tend to give ideas lying around space and sunlight to sprout. (This crop of new-old ideas are also, to a large degree, long-run incompatible, but that is, perhaps, a slightly different point).
The question then becomes what other ideas are still lying around waiting for the next crisis to sprout?
An incomplete list of some of the seeded but not yet sprouted ideas I have my eye on include:
Harberger taxes
Citizen assemblies
Quadratic voting on public policy
Self-governing city states
Citizenship not tied to a geographic nation state but to virtual diasporas
“Human” rights for non-human entities
What hidden ideas do you think could do with some sunlight?
And which do you think should stay buried forever?