~~ This was originally written in April 2023, I was sitting on it to edit/update it for publishing, but I've changed my mind. I like the idea of having yearly plans posted, to see how they evolve year over year. See My History for where I've come from and Plan 2024 for what's happening next ~~
After a decade of focusing inwards, it's time for a decade of focusing outwards. I've learned to map unknown territory, first within (read here for the journey, read here for the guidebook), now it's time to branch out. I started exploring and mapping the DeFi space in early 2021, trying to find good, safe (hah) returns on cryptos, and it has worked out pretty well so far. Using that experience the learn the skills to collect and filter data and see what's actually happening (as opposed to what the projects advertise and hype) made me eager for bigger datasets to study.
My next idea was to look at charities. A friend of mine was really into a few, and I wanted to get involved to help the cause. They had a strong focus on clean water, which I found admirable. Some things fell through, so I moved to looking at other options besides water. I didn't know what was best, so I began looking into Effective Altruism, to see how they had been choosing/ranking charities. EA is a good concept, I like the work they're doing.
I still wanted to go bigger, and finally it clicked. The biggest you can go is the entire world, and the information about the world isn't as private as people think. It's a little murky, and hard to find, but it's all out there. Governments, NGOs, organizations of all sizes put out reports monthly, quarterly, yearly. They all state their goals, where they've come from, what they're doing, and where they're planning on going. There has to be some interesting info hiding in all that, so I want to start digging.
The goal of the plan is to find where we (we as a planet) are, where we say we're going, and where we should be going. In addition, there needs to be backwards facing research to check historical data to see how we said we would change, and then compare over time future predictions of where we will go vs where we're actually going.
The UN has the big SDGs and other goals over the past ~30 years (I started with the 1993 Vienna Declaration). The world has come together and made goals for themselves to try and guide us towards a better future. By looking back at what governments said they wanted to do, we can compare data points to see how we've succeeded/failed in those goals, which countries have done the best and which have lagged behind. Each goal has a relevant data point from ourworldindata.org or gapminder.org to track results, and the SDGs each have directly stated metrics that are being tracked to measure success.
The world is being guided by forces beyond the countries. Each country is trying to take care of itself, but also trying to compete and increase their power relative to other countries. Each has their own goals and desires, as well as the group goals that all countries agree to work together on. Countries have made promises of what they will do, both through internal reports for themselves, as well as with commitments to global initiatives to contribute to the whole. Countries can be judged by how well they do what they say they're going to do, as well as how they score on the key metrics of the global goals.
In addition to countries, there are NGOs and global institutions such as the World Bank, UN, WEF, etc. that try guide the countries. Some organizations limit what countries can and cannot do through varying levels of effectiveness. These NGOs also produce reports to say what they're going to do, and can be judged accordingly.
There are also the global markets, represented by the largest hedge funds in the world who move capital around to support different goals. These are more neutral actors in the game, unless an NGO or country has increased influence to guide them in a specific direction. Alone, hedge funds are driven with "make money", they don't seem to be picky as to how. As well, there are the international currency markets that allow you to see how countries are valued relative to one another. There is come control with the IMF and the WEF to influence spending/lending activities, but through the different exchange rates you can see how different countries feel about each other by seeing what they're willing to invest in. There are credit rating companies that rank each country to show how stable an investment each are, based on their global factors and economic strengths.
Roughly speaking, international organizations try to organize the countries together to show a rough "this is what should be happening", and markets react to what countries do. One leads, the other lags. In theory, there would be alignment between the orgs picking the best course of action, the countries trying to follow that course, and the markets rewarding the initiatives and making money when the countries follow the initiatives correctly. But alas, the linkages are not that smooth. All parties involved care about themselves (most likely) more than others, and will prioritize self survival and power gain over helping the collective. Selfish incentives are necessary to actually drive actors in the "correct" directions.
The rough outline is:
- Find the direction the world says it wants to go in, based on individual actors stated desires as well as the coordinated desires
- Compare the desired direction to potential better directions
- Monitor how each actor in the world is moving towards or away from those goals
- See which actors are best moving towards improved goals instead of the stated goals
- ???
- Profit
Underlying this is some design work I've been doing based on resilience planning and disaster responses for communities, based on this work. I've written some details about how I've modified that framework here.
For now this project is heavy research based, I'm sure I've got wrong ideas about things that I've written here. I need more time to get a proper grasp of what's going on and to see where each actor sits. Even if I'm wrong on details, the rough outline of the plan fits. I'm not sure how I can publish my findings, I can write articles when bigger ideas form, tweet small fun facts, and try to make some shared spreadsheets. I want to include others with me on this journey, I need to sort out how best to do that.
For now, time for the Plan 2024