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Progress Studies and Charter Cities: Mark Lutter on the Roots of Progress Podcast

Jason Crawford of The Roots of Progress interviews CCI Executive Director Mark Lutter on progress studies and charter cities.

Jason Crawford of The Roots of Progress interviews CCI Executive Director Mark Lutter on progress studies and charter cities.

A little while ago I recorded an interview with Mark Lutter, founder of the Charter Cities Institute, to talk about progress studies generally and a bit about charter cities. 

Mark and I recently had an interesting conversation about the progress studies and the budding progress movement, and what it could be and where it could go. I wanted to expand on those thoughts with him here, and also talk a little bit about the Charter Cities Institute. So, Mark, let’s start with progress. I’ll just ask you again the question I asked you before that sparked an interesting conversation. What potential value do you see in the progress movement?

Mark: So one, is it the “progress movement” now? I find that a little bit amusing. But second, more generally, if you look at statistics over the last 40, 50 years, economic growth has been somewhat stagnant. This is sort of Tyler Cowen’s thesis. If you look at the period from about 1850 to 1900 or 1910, you see this really rapid economic growth in terms of discovery, innovation, it’s averaging about 3% annually. You see the creation of all of these new technologies from airplanes to internal combustion to electricity to indoor plumbing, that really transformed the world. So if you take somebody from 1900 and put them in a house in 1950, everything will be completely different. But then if you take somebody from 1950 and put them in a house today, everything will be relatively similar, with the exception of electronics. They won’t really know what to do with computers, but other than that it will be relatively similar, in terms of indoor plumbing, in terms of there being a refrigerator and microwave, etc.”

Listen to more about progress studies here.

Learn more about charter cities here.

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