A Culture of Progress
Riffing on Progress Studies and the next president.
Jason Crawford is the Founder of the Roots of Progress Institute, and the related blog (also substack). I’ve been reading through some of the essays in his latest large project that’s he calling the “Techno-Humanist Manifesto”. It’s really good. If there’s one takeaway from this post, it’s that you should check out the essays he has written so far.
Crawford’s long term thesis is that technology and industry have transformed humanity, creating beauty and flourishing where there used to be only poverty and struggle. We can pursue this dream and lift our society to future heights that today we cannot even fathom. This did not used to be a radical position, but we’ve turned away from this idea and taken negative views of technology and even progress. This is particularly surprising because human welfare really has continued to improve across a robust array of dimensions. Jason Crawford (along with some others like Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison) has helped to establish a broader “Progress Studies” movement, and Scott Alexander has a nice summary post on a big conference they had this year.
The call to arms to defend progress resonates with me. Crawford’s writings are a full-throated celebration of the society humanity has built and the titanic achievements that have become overlooked because they are so common now. From the intro:
To our ancient ancestors, our mundane routines would seem like wizardry: soaring through the air at hundreds of miles an hour; making night bright as day with the flick of a finger; commanding giant metal servants to weave our clothes or forge our tools; mixing chemicals in vast cauldrons to make a fertilizing elixir that grants vigor to crops; viewing events or even holding conversations from thousands of miles away; warding off the diseases that once sent half of children to an early grave. We build our homes in towers that rise above the hills; we build our ships larger and stronger than the ocean waves; we build our bridges with skeletons of steel, to withstand wind and storm. Our sages gaze deep into the universe, viewing colors the eye cannot see, and they have discovered other worlds circling other Suns; they have found the atoms of Democritus; they can tell us the system of the heavens and the mechanism of life; they can at long last turn base metals into gold.1 Once, these accomplishments, and their benefits to humanity, were referred to simply as “progress.”
The most powerful Kings of 500 years ago had no access to things we take for granted: cheap food, central heating, instantaneous communication with our relatives wherever they are on the planet. Delivery pizza could not have been purchased at any price. From Chapter 1:
We forget that everything had to be invented, even the most mundane features of daily life. Basic fasteners such as the zipper, the paper clip, the safety pin, and the rubber band were not invented until the 1800s.6 Simple food containers such as soda cans, plastic bottles, and milk cartons required a remarkable amount of engineering: to choose the right materials, to make them easily openable, to manufacture them cheaply.
But today progress is not seen as an obvious good. People regularly talk as if we are living in the worst times of the world and that they would choose to be born in the past rather than today. Crawford argues that not only is this despair depressing for us psychologically, but it is harming our ability to push progress further.
If society believes that scientific, technological and industrial progress is harmful or dangerous, people will work to slow it down or stop it. Activists have obstructed all forms of energy—nuclear power, oil and gas, even solar and wind14—and the average American benefits from no more energy today than fifty years ago.
Crawford wants to make the case that progress is good and thus we should actively work to achieve it, instead of thwarting it as we often do. Chapter Two dives into the sheer powerlessness of early humans, and yet how completely we have overcome the state of nature. We barely consider it day-to-day, but humans are essentially the only animals that do not find their own food. Civilization allowed for the invention of professions outside of farming or gathering. But even these new jobs were extremely difficult. Forges didn’t have thermometers, and ships didn’t have satellite positioning systems. If the winter lasted longer than expected or you slipped and broke your leg at the wrong time, you could easily starve. The extent to which literally none of these gargantuan challenges to our ancestors bother us in the slightest today is amazing.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on human achievement and the importance of fulfilling human desires as an end in itself. Only humans can cooperate and work together across generations to build society. Natural beauty is great, but it is human enterprises that allow the discovery of how the world works and appreciate it. Evolution can only learn through generational guessing; we can learn by experimentation and communication. Crawford also takes on the belief that modern capitalism causes meaninglessness. Growth doesn’t just mean you can buy more crap you don’t need:
And more of that life can be devoted to the things we enjoy most—recreation, loved ones, personal enrichment, self-actualization—because less and less of it is devoted to basic necessities. At the start of the 20th century, the average American household devoted the vast majority of its expenditure, about 80%, just to food, clothing, and housing; by the end of the century, that was down to 50%.16 More wealth doesn’t just mean more of the same stuff, and it doesn’t even just mean more luxurious versions of the same stuff: it means that once you have fed, clothed, and housed yourself, you still have money left for dancing lessons, camping gear, a family photo session, or a trip to Taipei.
The Future
Crawford hasn’t gotten to the part of the manifesto thinking about the future yet. I figured I might take a brief crack at it.
Let’s consider a society that leans into progress, rather than shuns it. In this world, we allow technological innovation to flourish, we celebrate it as our destiny as a species, and we construct policy around getting more of it.
I think we would firstly see a diminishing of many problems that plague our society. Climate change would basically be solved. We already know enhanced rock weathering can absorb carbon from the atmosphere. With abundant clean energy from next-generation nuclear power, solar, and fusion, we could power atmospheric carbon capture at scale while providing cheap electricity to everyone.
Staying with energy, for a moment, with practically unlimited cheap electricity, we could desalinate seawater at massive scale, turning deserts into gardens. Cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas could become lush oases, their streets lined with shade trees and flowing fountains. Water-intensive agriculture could expand into previously arid regions. Energy-hungry industries like aluminum smelting and chemical manufacturing could become dramatically cheaper. We could run massive indoor farming operations anywhere, freeing agriculture from the constraints of climate and weather. Data centers could expand without environmental concern, supporting ever more powerful AI systems and computational tools. In a world of energy abundance, many of our current resource constraints simply disappear.
Energy also contributes to transportation improvements. With cheap enough energy, synthetic fuels could make carbon-neutral aviation commonplace and dramatically reduce ticket prices, since fuel costs are typically a quarter of airlines' operating expenses. Moreover, regulations have kept back supersonic travel for decades. We could have both cheaper and significantly faster air travel.
Housing abundance would transform our cities and quality of life. Advanced materials and automated construction techniques could slash building costs. Today we spend huge portions of our income and price out people who want to move to cities with the best job prospects just to live in century-old buildings. Instead, every family could start with a brand new house by default, always having the latest amenities, building materials, and spaces adapted for today’s living rather than 100 years ago. With reformed zoning laws and embracing of new construction methods, housing could become so plentiful that the concept of a "housing crisis" becomes as foreign to our grandchildren as food scarcity is to us.
Space colonization would open up entirely new frontiers for humanity. Regular shuttles to orbital habitats could become as common as international flights are today. Mining asteroids could provide abundant raw materials while preserving Earth's environment. Permanent bases on the Moon and Mars would not just be scientific outposts, but the beginning of new branches of human civilization.
Perhaps most transformative would be advances in health and longevity. We're already seeing promising developments in gene therapy, regenerative medicine, and understanding of aging processes. We know we could create platform vaccines to eliminate entire families of viruses, but we just need policy that rewards their creation. A society embracing progress could see dramatic extensions of healthy lifespan. Diseases that terrify us today could become as manageable as infections in the antibiotic era.
Beyond these specific domains, we might see innovations we can barely imagine today. Just as someone from 1924 could hardly conceive of the internet, our future technologies might seem like magic to us. Artificial intelligence could help us solve previously intractable problems in science and engineering. New forms of education could help everyone reach their full potential. Advances in psychology and neuroscience could help us better understand ourselves and each other, leading to more effective institutions and stronger communities.
The key insight is that progress compounds upon itself. Each breakthrough opens new possibilities, and a society oriented toward progress would be better positioned to seize these opportunities rather than fear them. As Crawford suggests, our ancestors would view our current lives as wizardry - perhaps it's time we embraced our role as wizards of the future.
I Do Have Some Concerns
Finally, we turn to today, and political events which got me thinking about this area. I was not a supporter of Donald Trump during the 2024 election. However, there’s no arguing that Democrats and left-leaning groups have largely opposed the positive and triumphant view of progress I have outlined above. Degrowthers, climate activists, unions, and more have taken the stance that economic growth and progress are bad, zero sum, and should be opposed. Not everyone in the Democratic party believes this; there is a growing number of advocates of the “Abundance Agenda” including Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Noah Smith, and others.
The Biden administration itself did not embrace this worldview. The CHIPS Act was beleaguered by government regulations preventing much of the investment money from getting to projects quickly. The anti big business stance of much of administration’s regulatory arms, especially the FTC, seemed specifically opposed to growth or innovation, even if it benefited consumers. Kamala Harris, as Biden’s VP, deserves reasonable suspicion when it comes to issues of progress and advancing humanity, and I don’t really begrudge anyone who opposed her on those grounds.
What was most surprising to me was that many who I would consider to be on the pro-progress side enthusiastically embraced Donald Trump. I’m not talking about overall frustration with the political system yet ultimately finding Trump more palatable, but rather actively campaigning for the former commander-in-chief. Elon Musk and Marc Andreeson were probably the biggest advocates going to bat for the once and future president. While the first Trump administration wasn’t terrible when it came to innovation policy, it was fairly mixed. A deregulatory environment is good, but generally attacks on free trade are unhelpful for trying to build supply chains for complex goods. Operation Warp Speed was a spectacular demonstration of how government policy can incentivize powerful scientific breakthroughs.
The problem is that Trump didn’t run on Operation Warp Speed, or on bringing that kind of policy success to other parts of the government. He ran away from his record here. He’s appointed RFK Jr., a techno-skeptic conspiracy theorist to be HHS Secretary. RFK has said that the polio vaccine killed more people than polio via vaccine induced soft tissue cancers. And Trump has no concept of economic growth, positive sum trade, or technological progress. He believes bilateral trade deficits are direct money transfers, and that automation at U.S. ports would harm jobs. These are positions of a luddite.
Of course, an administration is made up of many people. Jim O’Neill is a great pick for HHS Deputy Secretary, and Jared Isaacman has potential to really accelerate space exploration at NASA. Both seem likely to be much more aligned towards a progress agenda than anyone who could have conceivably been appointed by Kamala Harris. And, so far at least, Elon Musk continues to hover around government and be involved in everything. When the intra-coalition argument about legal skilled immigration blew up, I expected Musk and any legal immigration advocates to quickly lose. After all, Trump’s new Deputy Chief of Staff and previous Trump administration veteran Stephen Miller has repeatedly sought to curtail legal immigration to the U.S. But I was fairly surprised that Trump sided with Musk, and indeed Kalshi shows a 60% chance of expanded H1-Bs under Trump as of the time of writing.
It remains to be seen what will actually happen during the next four years. Steve Bannon has already called Elon “truly evil” in response to the whole coalition fight, and Trump has a history of very public fall outs with his most important advisors. I will take whatever victories I can get, but I would caution anyone who shares my viewpoint to avoid identifying too strongly with any given political party. Even if you judge Trump to be better on this issue, he’s not a true believer that the world can be improved by technology or development. More than anything, Trump is simply on Trump’s side, and he has little consistent ideology. The real work of advancing human capabilities will continue regardless of political allegiances, driven by those who genuinely believe in technology's power to improve the world.